Our attachment to genetic determinism doesn't really jive with our (among most Americans', it seems) love of free will. In the science world, however, I kind of get the resistance: many scientists have built their careers on the idea that genes rule. They don't want to give up the throne. But it's time: when it comes to finding the causes of disease, genetics is not working.

Our attachment to genetic determinism doesn't really jive with our (among most Americans', it seems) love of free will. In the science world, however, I kind of get the resistance: many scientists have built their careers on the idea that genes rule. They don't want to give up the throne. But it's time: when it comes to finding the causes of disease, genetics is not working.

Greetings in that Diviine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Genetic determinism is much like synergy, it demonstrates that human free-will interacts with the variables of cosmic reality. Our free-will is not the sole determining factor of the Universe, from our self-seeking, self-righteous, and self-serving perspective it only just seems this way

Genetics are life, there is only truly one kind of life on Earth, and that is DNA. DNA determines the potentiality but not the actuality, it is the nature vs nurture debate, and the resolution is the same, it comes to a matter of both, there is a mutuality and interdependence.

Genes predict what may happen, human free-will reacts to what is happening. However, none of anything would happen without the initial genetic information to translate chemical equations into tangible reality. So both camps are equally right. Folks who suspect that ONLY DNA determines behavior are silly and ideologically naive, but so are folks who only examine the environmental or individual personality variables. Life is simply too complicated for simplistic interpretations.

DNA can set up a certain kind of personality, character, disposition, and pattern of biological traits in an organism, but that organisms individual sense of life and living uses these possibilities like tools in a tool-kit. So social mammals are both social because of a genetic disposition, and yet also because of the benefits of social living in a dangerously unpredictable environment. Primates would be social whether or not there is a direct environmental benefit because we are hard-wired genetically to be social, to seek to understand what other humans are thinking or feeling as expressed by body language, eye contact, and vocalizations. We are hard-wired from birth to look for these social factors and adapt to them to survive because infants can't live in any way without help, unlike reptiles who seem to be able to live indepentently from day one. Reptiles give strong evidence to determinism, and yet primates give strong evidence to behaviorism. In human terms, DNA is the predestination God implanted in our being, and yet our own free-will allows us to read and interpret this potential and to accept or reject it. Some aspects of our personality are hard-wired by DNA, such as the level of hormonal reaction to stress or a susceptibility to a certain disease or a natural talent, and yet free-will allows all living organisms to adapt their behavior around their genetic strengths and limitations.

stay blessed,habte selassie

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"Yet stand aloof from stupid questionings and geneologies and strifes and fightings about law, for they are without benefit and vain." Titus 3:10

Our attachment to genetic determinism doesn't really jive with our (among most Americans', it seems) love of free will. In the science world, however, I kind of get the resistance: many scientists have built their careers on the idea that genes rule. They don't want to give up the throne. But it's time: when it comes to finding the causes of disease, genetics is not working.

I don't know of any scientist saying how people are slaves of their genes. Besides free will, there is also the fact that many may have genes for something, like psychosis, and live perfectly normal lives.

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Quote from: GabrieltheCelt

If you spend long enough on this forum, you'll come away with all sorts of weird, untrue ideas of Orthodox Christianity.

Quote from: orthonorm

I would suggest most persons in general avoid any question beginning with why.